


Drawn and Quartered

by chiaroscure



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Apocalypse, Archangel Family Dynamics, Before Lucifer's Fall (Supernatural), Canonical Character Death, Gen, Lucifer's Fall (Supernatural), Season 5 nostalgia fic, canon-compliant through season 5, season 5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28672929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiaroscure/pseuds/chiaroscure
Summary: A history of the archangels' relationships with each other through the ages, from their creation to the apocalypse. Based on season 5.Chapter 1: GabrielChapter 2: RaphaelChapter 3: LuciferChapter 4: Michael
Relationships: Gabriel & Lucifer (Supernatural), Gabriel & Michael (Supernatural), Gabriel & Raphael (Supernatural), Lucifer & Michael (Supernatural), Lucifer & Raphael (Supernatural), Michael & Raphael (Supernatural)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	1. Gabriel

**Author's Note:**

> These are ideas I had about season 5 back when I originally watched it, but which I didn’t get around to writing until now. Apologies for anything that isn't canon compliant anymore — I haven’t seen most of the more recent seasons yet, so this is pure season 5 nostalgia. I’m very excited to be back, though, even though I’m sure my topics/takes are super outdated!

MICHAEL

There is nothing. Then, suddenly, there is something.

“I am Gabriel,” the new something declares to Creation. Or maybe it declares this to Michael, because as soon as there is no longer nothing, there is Michael. Michael, ever-watchful, is present when Gabriel comes into being: the first thing other than himself or God that the fourth archangel ever knows.

“Gabriel,” Michael greets. “Welcome. You are loved.”

The words will stay with Gabriel until his undoing.

*

Gabriel loves to run. He blazes through the heavens as fast as his wings will carry him, spinning through cold channels some days and riding supernovas on others, dancing around obstacles and streaking straight across the sky. Anything, so long as it’s fast. He enjoys exploring what he finds when he stops, but he’s rarely going anywhere in particular — he just loves to run.

Raphael comes with him often, but Lucifer is his best partner. Lucifer loves the speed less than he loves the thrill, and the path less than what’s on it, but that doesn’t matter to Gabriel as long as Lucifer loves to run with him. There’s nowhere Gabriel can throw himself that Lucifer won’t go too, a blazing trail of pure light beside him to spur Gabriel on. Gabriel doesn’t mind going by himself (an angel is never _truly_ alone in Heaven, after all), but there is something special about his adventures when Lucifer joins him. It feels as if they always go faster, farther, when they are together.

Gabriel always asks Lucifer to come with him, and sometimes Lucifer asks Michael, which Gabriel never thinks to do. Michael is sturdier than the rest of them, harder to sway from his course; Gabriel doesn’t want to distract him, so he doesn’t bother. But Lucifer has no such considerations.

“Come with us,” Lucifer demands, winding himself playfully around Michael like water around a rock. “Let Raphael watch our siblings for a while — see what Gabriel can show you.”

Gabriel doesn’t expect it to work, but Lucifer, who knows Michael better, glows with pride when Michael agrees. Lucifer streaks away in a flash ahead of them, so Gabriel grabs onto Michael and pulls him along in pursuit. Michael needs no persuasion to keep going once they’ve started, matching pace with Gabriel until Lucifer stops to let them catch up.

Gabriel begins to stop too, wondering if Lucifer might be about to suggest a change in course, but this time it is Michael who grabs Gabriel.

“Wha—"

“Watch this,” Michael whispers. With Gabriel in tow, he hurdles straight into Lucifer and pulls them all down a black hole, squeezing both of them tight as Lucifer shrieks with laughter.

*

Gabriel is the first of the angels to venture into the garden to greet their Father’s newest creations. He doesn’t know much about them yet, other than that they are important enough to have been made in His own image, so he’s not sure what to say. He has greeted plenty a new species before — more than any other angel, because he is quick and curious and he likes novelty — but none anything like humanity.

So, when he touches down on the Earth to speak to these new creatures, he thinks about what Michael said to him at his own beginning.

“Welcome, Lilith and Adam. You are loved.”

*

Lilith and Adam _are_ loved, as all of God’s creations are loved by the angels — but not more. Most angels keep their distance, choose to guard from afar rather than to involve themselves very much.

Most angels including Michael, to Gabriel’s surprise.

“Aren’t you curious about them?” Gabriel asks him one day early, sitting beside him from his perch.

“No,” Michael replies. Gabriel is surprised by that too.

“Why not? They’re important.”

Michael nods, watching the pink dawn play over the water the humans are sleeping beside.

“You’re curious about _other_ things,” Gabriel needles. “Surely you should be _more_ curious about them than about the rest.”

“It is our duty to guard them, not to be curious about them,” Michael says flatly. As they watch, Lucifer puts on Lilith’s favorite of his faces below before approaching her.

“You can do both,” Gabriel huffs. “ _Lucifer_ does both.”

Michael says nothing, only watches as Lucifer offers Lilith an apple from the top of a nearby tree.

**

RAPHAEL

They all feel the echoes of what Lucifer feels in his last instant. It’s horrible, almost unbearable, even from afar. Had it been any of them but Michael standing over him, they might have taken mercy on him to escape the feeling, and Lucifer might have remained in Heaven. But Michael is Michael, and the next instant, Lucifer is gone.

Michael leaves. Any of the rest of them, in his place, would be wrecked, but there is a brittle calmness to Michael as he goes. He goes, and they let him, because he has just done something righteous and vile and painful, and there is nothing to do but let him do as he must.

Gabriel does not leave, but he doesn’t do anything else, either. He doesn’t move; he doesn’t think; he barely feels. Lucifer is gone. Lucifer is gone, and his absence is bigger than all the chaos left in his wake.

Raphael steps up, then. He rallies the angels that are still in command of themselves to help the others. He organizes comfort and unity, making sure that everything is in line once more. There have always been four archangels in Heaven, but Raphael works and works and works to show that they can and _will_ go on with only three.

When order is mostly restored, Raphael comes to Gabriel, who still has not moved. Raphael extends his grace until they are only just touching, and they stand together for a long time until Gabriel has returned to himself enough to hear Raphael.

“Come, Brother,” he says. “There is much work to be done, and I cannot do it all alone.”

Gabriel knows he’s right. Part of himself fell with Lucifer, but he looks at Raphael and knows that part of him did too. So he puts his grief aside for now, because _this_ sibling is still here, and _this_ sibling needs him.

*

Gabriel helps until he can’t. Then, he goes to Earth, just for a while. The black soil and shade of leaves are a respite from his memories, so he seeks out dark places where things unlike himself grow when Heaven grates him raw.

Sometimes he goes as Heaven’s Messenger, but sometimes he goes as no one, disguising himself as a traveler, playing little tricks on the humans in acts of petty, near-harmless revenge against…against...he’s not sure who it’s against. Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to find out more about them, but he knows he shouldn’t, so he keeps his distance.

He likes Earth to the extent that he knows it. Likes that he feels less significant here, in the midst of so much impermanence. Over and over, he throws himself at the feeling of insignificance like he used to throw himself at dying stars, because the anonymity gives him space to remember that he isn’t Raphael, or Michael, or Lucifer.

He always goes back to Heaven eventually, but his trips to Earth grow longer every time.

Michael comes back soon before Gabriel starts to skip out. He communicates with few besides his two closest siblings, and even them infrequently. He was always sturdy, but he has become impenetrable as he never was before. Always wise, always absolute, always to be followed. Gabriel knew things would never be the same again, but he expected he might eventually get his remaining siblings back as they once were, at least. He watches Michael, and knows that will never happen.

Raphael continues to work. He listens to Michael when he issues instructions, commands alongside him when Michael gets involved; he manages Gabriel when Gabriel is there to be managed, and carries on without him when he isn’t. Raphael heals the kingdom of Heaven as best he is able by himself, filling in the gaps in Michael’s plans seamlessly and stoically.

Gabriel does not like Raphael’s version of Heaven, devoid of play and laughter. He knows if he wants it to be different he should do something about it, but he won’t. So as Raphael continues rebuilding, Gabriel continues running away.

*

“Come with me, Brother,” Gabriel offers before departing for Earth again one day. Maybe if Raphael could just join him there, he would remember who they used to be.

“I have work to do,” Raphael replies.

“Just once, just for a while. Let Annael stand in for you, just for a day. Just for an hour, Raphael, please.”

Raphael looks at Gabriel for a long moment.

“I worry about you, Gabriel,” he says, and turns his back on him.

Gabriel does not say goodbye before he goes this time, because he never says goodbye before he goes. There’s nothing to say goodbye _to_ , so what would be the point?

What even is the point in coming back?

**

GABRIEL

The northlands remind Gabriel of how Earth was when shehe (Gabriel hasn’t quite figured out how this works for Earth-walking angels yet) would roam the sharp new wilds together with hisher siblings, so that is where shehe begins hisher life outside of Heaven. There are gods here; shehe can feel them, but they are unfamiliar. Power soon finds power, though, and somewhere, in what will some day be called Scandinavia, Gabriel is found by a red-haired woman in the middle of an ice field. The air around her ripples with divinity unlike any Gabriel has ever tasted, and she offers herhim a smile like a knife.

“You are Something,” the woman says.

“Yes,” Gabriel concedes, without offering more.

“I’m Something too,” the woman tells herhim like an invitation. Gabriel hopes hisher conjured eyes sparkle like this woman’s do, like a game shehe wants to join.

“What are you?”

She shimmers as she laughs, and takes herhim by the arm.

“Call me Loki.”

*

Loki’s voice always sounds like it’s echoing through stalactites, but it crackles just like flames. She walks with Gabriel among the humans effortlessly as one of them. Gabriel hides her angelic grace deep inside her mirage of a body so that she will not scare the humans off if they look too long: she has never been this close to them without admitting what she is, and she doesn’t want to give herself away. These humans are fond of _her_ , although (or because) they do not know what she is. What she was.

She is shy yet, compared to what she will soon be, but she loves what she is becoming. She loves that she is nothing in particular now, and so she can be anything. The freedom of that glitters in her every thought, and she tries not to think of Before.

*

Loki (he today) says, “you aren’t real, are you?”

“No,” Gabriel (also he, today) replies. Because he isn’t, not truly. His senses are an adaptation of what he had as an angel: good for sight and sound and smell, muted for taste and touch, though he doesn’t know how muted yet.

Loki looks at him for a while, considering. “You should try it.”

Gabriel has thought about it. He took a vessel before, centuries ago — the only archangel to have done so, at this point in time — but he never really used it. He kept himself at a distance from the body he occupied like he was afraid he and the human inside might somehow contaminate each other. But if he is going to be a creature of Earth, he should really _be_ a creature of Earth. He doesn’t want to run only _away_ ; there has to be something to be running _towards_ , too.

His choice of vessel was made by convenience before, but there’s nothing but bloodlines to dictate him now. Too many options — but then, once he chooses, that will be too limiting, he worries. Now, he can be whatever he wants, look however he wants — but how should he choose something that will keep him locked into just one aspect of the multitudes hetheyitshe contains?

“How do I decide?” he asks, after a moment.

Loki, having been embodied from the start, has never had to take a vessel, but he understands Gabriel’s question and laughs. He passes his hand across his own face, his features shifting from male to female, dark to pale, bare to feathered to furred to scaled, and back again.

“‘Decide’?” he snickers. “There’s no need to _decide_ , my friend; it’s all just a trick of the light.”

*

Gabriel’s new vessel is plump and dark-eyed. She doesn’t ask many questions, and neither does Gabriel. He shuts her away in her head and she’s content with that, so he leaves her be. Loki teaches him to shift the shadows to make this vessel look however he pleases, cackling in delight every time he does something particularly clever.

Loki feeds Gabriel. Bread first, then flowers, then oil. Fresh reindeer meat, steaming in the winter and bleeding down her chin. Fruits that Gabriel recognizes, and ones she does not: sour red and black orbs, crisp apples, berries that look like orange clouds at sunrise.

“I like these,” Gabriel proclaims, reveling in taste as he’s never tasted before. Loki grins, and feeds him honey from her fingertips, smirking about Gabriel’s sweet teeth with her tongue chasing the sugar down past Gabriel’s lips.

The wind in her hair flows; the snow under her feet bites; the cloth on her skin tickles and rubs. Loki’s hands are warm on her arm, callused on her cheek, sharp on her back, his lips like hot honey against her temple, across her throat, above her heart.

“Like _Heaven_ , isn’t it?” Loki breathes (always so clever) with Gabriel’s knees pressed to his waist, her wings unfurling a little more with every fevered roll of her hips.

She digs her fingers into his shoulders and kisses him real and fierce, hissing, “ _better_.”

*

Gabriel’s true vessel is born. They always knew his was going to be the first. Earlier than his siblings’ by more than a thousand years, though they never knew why.

Lucifer used to wax rhapsodic about their true vessels: how elegant it was that they should all four be given a perfect form with which to experience the Earth as it was meant to be experienced, at the precise moment when they would most need to be part of it. He would wonder about what it would be like, when the day came — speaking of fit and beauty and wholeness, how much they could learn about their Father’s creation through lens-made eyes, what they might do in flesh-made bodies.

Gabriel always thought it sounded nice, but he didn’t get it. Not then. Not really. He was having fun with his siblings already. What did they need vessels for? And why did he need his first? It worried him, that millennium of loneliness without the others.

Well, now he knows. And he knows why the others’ will be born when they’ll be born. It’s a long time off yet, but not long enough, because the isolation he used to fear has become something he now expects he’ll be reluctant to part with.

(It’s not long enough, but it’s also much, much too long, because when Lucifer’s true vessel is born Lucifer will be free again, and Gabriel _does_ still miss him. He doesn’t want to, just like he doesn’t want think about what he knows will happen when he finally gets to see his lost sibling again, ever since Heaven started calling Michael’s true vessel his sword. Gabriel hates it, he still hates it, so he ignores it, like he’s always done with everything he hates.)

None of them knew what to expect with their true vessels, back then. And none of the other three will know what to expect until they experience it themselves, because Gabriel won’t ( _can’t_ ) tell them. It’s not what Lucifer speculated it might be; the connection, such as it is, is nowhere near like what he guessed — not for Gabriel, anyway, although who is to say what it will be like for him. For Gabriel, it is not much more than a thin thread of _knowing_. A skip in his (borrowed) pulse, a drop in his (borrowed) stomach — little echoes of the life his true body is experiencing away from him.

A decade passes, then two, then three. Gabriel stays away, the mild curiosity he harbors easy enough to keep at bay with mead and sweets and sex and blood. He doesn’t know what he’s avoiding. It would be grand for him to claim it was destiny, but that doesn’t feel true. It feels more like running away from himself as he was supposed to be. As he isn’t anymore.

Eventually though his true vessel gets sick — mortally sick — so Gabriel goes. He can’t help it; the curiosity skyrockets the second he feels that his chance to investigate could vanish.

The sickness is quick to heal, and the man — bronze-haired, gold-eyed, with a face for mischief — says yes to him easily. Gabriel offers to let him go, but the man wants to stay. Too curious about what this means, he says. Gabriel can understand that.

So, it’s good. For years it’s good. Angel and vessel wander together, many-named and ever-shifting, exploring new parts of the world, picking up friends quickly and losing them just as fast.

Fifty years pass, then a century. They start to forget the man’s name, then where the seams between them used to be. In a moment when they remember, a little bit, what it was like to be two, Gabriel asks his vessel if he would like to go now, while he still has the chance. He says no. So, within a year, there is no “they” anymore. _They_ are Gabriel — whoever Gabriel has become. Together as just one entity, and that’s it.

This is what Lucifer was talking about, Gabriel thinks. He hopes his sibling will get to experience this too, before the end.

*

Gabriel returns to Scandinavia to discover it is much the same for now. Loki is easily found because she is not trying to hide — not from Gabriel, anyway.

“A change is coming,” she tells him with a sly look, face pink under the late winter sun. “I might take a little vacation to one of the other realms for a while.”

There are two invitations here for Gabriel to ponder, but the choice is easy. Loki grins the way Loki always grins and cuts locks of her hair to braid into Gabriel’s. She whispers spells in languages Gabriel understands as well as Enochian by now, paints his lips with her blood, breathes her own air into his lungs. Finally, she unclasps her cloak to drape around Gabriel’s shoulders, and it is done.

“Until we meet again, my friend,” she smirks with a wink, and then she’s gone.

That night, an outcast wanderer crosses Gabriel’s path. He tries to run, sensing the Thingness on her, but is betrayed by his own panic paralyzing him.

“What are you?” the wanderer asks in fright.

The newmade god shimmers as she laughs like wind through stalactites and says:

“Call me Loki.”

*

At some point they start putting sugar in cocoa. Any doubts Gabriel still had about leaving Heaven fuck right off the second he tries it.

**

LUCIFER

Gabriel has wondered, vaguely, if there would be anything special about encountering his siblings’ true vessels, when they eventually are born. He expects he’ll never find out, because he intends to avoid them.

He decides that a couple hundred years before Dean and Sam Winchester are born, but at some point between the decision and the time to act on it, he forgets his plan and makes a show of himself to draw their attention.

Too much marshmallow vodka or something, probably.

So he meets them. At first, they’re just two guys — giant, plaid-swathed, good-looking guys, but nothing dramatic. He just knows it’s them because he knows it’s them.

With Dean, he gets it pretty easily. He could pick Michael’s vessel out of a crowd with his eyes closed, if somebody asked him to. Dean’s got the older brother thing, the dutifulness, the protectiveness, the odd streaks of beauty and bitterness that he recognizes because Michael has them too. It makes sense; it fits, but that’s all.

Sam makes less sense to Gabriel, logically. Don’t get him wrong, a lot of it works great, but the story of _who_ he is doesn’t match up quite as nicely with _what_ he is as Gabriel maybe expected. The demonic tarnishes on his soul would disguise him to angels who don’t know better, which is strange, because Lucifer’s grace had never even heard of tarnish.

…But still, he _knows_ him as Lucifer’s — more deeply than he _knows_ Dean as Michael’s. There’s a tone that resonates from him in a pitch Gabriel has not heard since Lucifer, and he _knows_ , in some part of himself he shoved away when he left Heaven, that this is a _true_ vessel. When vessel and archangel do eventually meet, those tones are going to match. He won’t want to say yes to “ _the devil_ ,” but Gabriel knows that, when it comes to it, Sam Winchester is going to have a hell of a time saying no to _Lucifer_.

*

Dean Winchester is going to die, and Sam needs to get over that.

It’s not like it’ll _take_ when Dean dies, anyway. Michael (or somebody else on Michael’s orders…self-important bastard) is gonna drag him out of whatever hole he ends up in when it’s time for Apocalypse Now, no matter what happens to him. Can’t go to war without his sword, can he? Gabriel’s just having a little fun with his siblings’ toys while he still can.

Sam doesn’t get it that it’s fun though, and in Gabriel’s opinion Sam needs to learn to take a joke. He figures if he tells the same joke over and over again, maybe Sam will get it. That’s looking less and less likely the more times they go through it, but hey, maybe he’s just slow on the uptake.

Regardless of whether or not Sam ever gets the joke, though, he _does_ have to get used to the idea of fate one way or another. This train’s not going to jump track just because one of the passengers doesn’t like the destination. Might as well laugh along the way. Gabriel’s just trying to help.

Not that Gabriel is invested in any of this. _Obviously_. He’s just having fun. No skin off his nose if Sam _never_ gets it; he’s just along for the ride. Each time he sees Sam react to his brother’s death, it definitely doesn’t feel a little more like a punch to the gut. Sure, the way Sam feels watching Dean die might be _kind of_ similar to some stuff Gabriel has experienced, but that was ages ago, and he’s over it. Besides it’s not really Gabriel’s style to pick at old scars, you know?

It also isn’t in any way satisfying to watch Lucifer’s vessel go through what _Gabriel_ went through when Lucifer got himself thrown out of Heaven. Sam is not Lucifer, and Gabriel is not the kind of entity to need catharsis like that. He could maybe imagine why it _might_ be satisfying to _someone else_ , in theory, but this is purely impersonal. He’s not _deranged_. There’s no sick twist of vengeance in his stomach every time he thinks of a new creative way to make Lucifer’s true vessel _hurt_ like he did when Lucifer decided to get himself banished. This is all casual, light-hearted fun. It’s just a _joke_.

And it’s really, _really_ annoying that nobody’s laughing.

*

Gabriel doesn’t know what to expect now that Lucifer’s finally out.

Well, okay. He expects the horsemen, the horrors, the demons, the destruction. More and more angels crashing his party on Earth, Michael’s crusade getting harder and harder to ignore. That’s all going pretty much the way he thought it would.

But Lucifer himself? Gabriel honestly has no idea what his brother will be like after such an ungodly amount of time locked up in Hell. He hasn’t thought about it for a long time; he fully intended to sit this whole thing out, but now that he’s decided not to, he’s back to wondering about it. Not that he’ll have to wonder long, but he’s wondering anyway. Maybe it counts as strategizing, or something.

It’s easiest to imagine Lucifer exactly like he was when he Fell, like he has barely been gone at all. Self-righteous and high-minded, maybe just a little sooty. That’s not very likely, but it’s easy to imagine. It’s comfortable. Almost comfort _ing_.

Alternatively, he might be a sort of opposite-equivalent to what Michael has turned into since everything went off the rails. Following the steps, going through the motions, playing The Adversary dutifully but without much conviction. It would be weird, but everything’s so weird these days that it wouldn’t exactly be a surprise.

Or maybe he’ll be triumphant and shining, as if he’s won even before he has won just because he’s free again. Gabriel doesn’t think this option is likely, but it’s almost what he’s hoping for — even though he knows he’ll run away immediately if that’s what walks through the doors of the Elysian Fields.

He holds his breath and waits to find out what he’s getting himself into.

*

Lucifer looks _terrible_.

He looks like an open wound. He looks like a predator that chewed off its own foot to escape a trap, only to limp into a hunter’s camp.

He still looks like _himself_ , but himself run ragged. Cold and vicious and incomprehensibly hurt — still regal, but raw too. He flicks his vessel’s eyes like razors, wields his borrowed body like a sledgehammer, twists his bleeding face into snarls more naturally than most angels can manage with years of practice. This creature shouldn’t be recognizable as Lucifer, but there’s no mistaking him — what else could ever be _this?_

If Gabriel hadn’t spent the last however many years talking himself into his train-on-an-unchangeable-track metaphor, he might reevaluate his plan. Lucifer, as he is now, is a walking invitation to war as he never used to be — but when Gabriel looks at him, he doesn’t _want_ to fight him. A too-small part of him whispers that if he would just stop and tell Lucifer, _you are loved_ , they might avoid whatever they’re about to do to each other.

Heaven, though, has been repeating that Lucifer must be met with violence for so long that even Gabriel has come to believe it. He doesn’t _want_ to do this, but he’s here to make his stand, and that means combat. There are probably better ways, but it’s too late consider any of them now. He has wasted all the time he _should_ have used thinking of a better plan hiding, and now he’s here, and it’s time to act.

 _This is the worst idea I’ve ever had_ , Gabriel thinks before stepping out, blade drawn, to face his brother.


	2. Raphael

MICHAEL

It has been seven days since Adam and Lilith were made, and Raphael has decided the time has come for him to introduce himself to them.

“They’re funny,” Gabriel says as Raphael prepares to descend. Gabriel has been down a few times already, was the first angel to greet them, and he has been vibrating with impatience to know his brothers’ reactions to this new, important creation.

“You’ll like them,” Lucifer assures Raphael. Lucifer has met them too, though he has been quieter about it than Gabriel. Nonetheless, his curiosity about the humans hums around him whenever they are mentioned.

“We are _messengers_ ,” Michael reminds Raphael while he looks at Gabriel, then, “and guardians,” still to Raphael though now he looks at Lucifer. There is caution in his voice, but also warmth enough to reassure Raphael.

Michael has not met the humans yet; Raphael doesn’t know why, but he respects what reasoning Michael might have. It is why he has not introduced himself to them yet either. Still, no one has warned him not to go, and Raphael trusts Gabriel and Lucifer’s enthusiasm. They have been commanded to love these humans, and, as his two brothers flanking him in age have all but told him, how can one love something on Earth from Heaven?

He readies himself to go, but spares one last glance to his eldest sibling. Michael meets his gaze stoically, but nods once. So, Raphael dives.

*

It becomes clear quickly that Lilith and Lucifer fascinate each other. She listens to Raphael with detached attention when he speaks, but Lucifer arrives and her soul burns with favor that puts what interest she has in Raphael to shame.

( _It’s because Lucifer doesn’t just tell her things; he asks her questions_, Gabriel will later say, but that will be long past the time when Raphael cares to know more about the fallen woman’s preoccupation with the brother they don’t know yet they’re losing.)

Raphael doesn’t mind that Lilith’s attention is elsewhere, though, because there is Adam, and Raphael likes Adam. Adam is steady, and he takes his time and asks his questions and receives Raphael’s answers with graceful simplicity. He loves the grass and the rocks, the dirt beneath his feet, the sunlight on his skin. He is nothing like an angel; he is just what he is meant to be, and Raphael respects him for that. Although the archangel’s love will always belong to the heavens, it is no chore to serve the man while things are still good in the garden.

When Lilith is banished, though, Raphael stops visiting Adam. Lucifer’s fascination with her has become an ugly obsession, no matter how high-minded and tight-lipped he is about it. Raphael has no interest in following in his brother’s footsteps. If this is where angelic intervention in human affairs can lead, he wants no part in it. He will watch from afar, act as distant guardian, do as he’s told. Gabriel has stepped up as messenger, but there are few messages to be delivered to them anymore anyway, so there’s no reason for Raphael to venture down if he doesn’t want to. Sometimes he misses Adam, but he sees how Lucifer’s attention has twisted Lilith, and knows it’s for the best that he keeps his distance.

Michael was right to stay away from the beginning.

*

Lucifer has been away often since Lilith’s banishment. The work is harder in Heaven during his long absences, but the tension he brings with him whenever he returns might be worse.

Every time he returns, he says less. Eventually, Raphael stops listening to Lucifer, and starts watching Michael. He’s not sure when the look in his oldest brother’s eyes shifted from concern to suspicion to something verging on enmity, but he hopes Lucifer notices it too, before what Raphael fears will come next.

**

GABRIEL

“How much can it _really_ matter, Michael?” Gabriel demands. The tension in Heaven is close to breaking, and Gabriel’s powerlessness to lessen it is making him more agitated by the day. “Lucifer will do as he is told eventually; I’m sure he will. He only needs time. He loves our Father, but you know how he is. He needs to test, but he will come around. It is an overreaction to treat him as you are.”

“It is not.”

“How do you _know_ that it’s not? This is what Lucifer _is_ — he’s curious, so he finds things to admire that the rest of us do not always see! He has found something he is having difficulty admiring, but soon he will discover a new way. Some new thing about humankind that we have all overlooked. You just have to give him _time_.”

“No.”

“But _why_ not _?_ ”

“Because this is different, Gabriel.”

Michael, finite as ever, turns away without another word. Gabriel stares at him in frustrated bewilderment, then leaves in a sudden flurry of wings.

Raphael watches Michael, who knows that he is there as they all know where the others always are, but he acknowledges neither Raphael’s presence nor Gabriel’s departure. He watches the Earth as Raphael watches him for several long, long moments, and Raphael wonders if he should apologize for Gabriel, or perhaps demand that Michael explain himself further.

But he does neither, and eventually the silence becomes too much to bear, so Raphael leaves too. The change in location, though, does nothing to calm the feeling of unease growing as steadily in his mind as in Gabriel’s.

*

“Lucifer, this is absurd,” Gabriel admonishes. His tone mimics Michael’s commands, but Raphael can hear the desperation edging in. “You’re just trying to prove some point just to show that you can. You don’t need to be right about this, Brother; nothing will change if you just do what our Father has told us to do.”

“Answers are all I want, Gabriel. That is not too much to ask of Him.”

Raphael feels Gabriel flinch at the reply as if Lucifer had struck him, though Lucifer sounds more sad than angry.

“This will end badly,” Gabriel presses. “One angel alone against the forces of Heaven doesn’t stand a chance, and if it comes to that Michael will not back down. Not even for you.”

“I will not be one angel alone,” Lucifer replies quietly, neither hopeful nor hopeless, “if you will stand with me.”

“I _can’t_ ,” Gabriel spits, sounding broken. “It wouldn’t help.”

“But you don’t believe that I am wrong, do you. You can see that they are flawed too. It’s alright to be afraid, but Brother, truth is more important than fear.”

“That’s not the _point,_ Lucifer. You _cannot_ win. Let go of your stubbornness and just forget about this — if not for our Father’s sake then for your own!”

“I’m sorry, Gabriel. I can’t.”

The shattering chill rolls off Gabriel and over Raphael like a blizzard wind, even from the distance at which he stands.

“Don’t apologize to _me_ ,” Gabriel bites out, “this isn’t _my_ stupidity, and _I_ won’t be the one to suffer for it.”

Gabriel leaves in a rustle of wings. Slowly, Lucifer turns his gaze toward Raphael. For a moment, Raphael thinks he will go to Lucifer — if not to join him, then at least to comfort him. But he knows that Lucifer is persuasive, and while Lucifer might not fear Michael’s sword, Raphael does. So he snuffs out the spark of guilt he feels looking at his sibling looking at him, and follows Gabriel away.

*

“We have to do something, Raphael,” Gabriel states. “We can’t let this happen; we have to put a stop to it.”

Raphael knows how Gabriel feels. He has felt this way too, since the first hints that something was going wrong. The force with which Michael stays the course of their Father’s will matches the force with which Lucifer has come to oppose it, and both make Raphael feel impossibly weak. He looks at Gabriel, and he sees the same smallness there that he knows Gabriel is seeing in him.

“This is not about us,” Raphael says. He knows that it’s the wrong thing to say, but he can’t think of anything else.

“Of course it’s about us,” Gabriel counters quickly. “They are our brothers. We are archangels like they are: if we don’t do something, who else will?”

It’s a painful question with a painful answer. Raphael wishes he were Michael, to sound surer of himself saying what he knows to be true — or that he were Lucifer, able to make the words Gabriel doesn’t want to hear go down easier. But he is neither of them, and unfortunately, he is all Gabriel has anymore.

“No one will, Gabriel,” he responds, the words ringing horribly in the air. “We will follow our orders and support our siblings, and Lucifer will either relent or he will fall. That is his choice to make, not ours.”

He wonders if Gabriel will run away, but Gabriel doesn’t. He just crumples inward, and says, “I hate it.”

Gabriel has always been quick and lively, but now he looks worn down. Michael has been growing harder and Lucifer sharper — both more dangerous, but the changes in neither of them communicates the gravity of this rift in Heaven to Raphael like the crushing fragility in Gabriel’s voice at this moment. He can hear how much hope his brother has lost, how little remains in him. It would perhaps be kinder for Raphael to extinguish whatever is left of it, but he won’t — can’t — do that to him. Instead, he reaches out to his brother in comfort and soothes what Gabriel will let him soothe, murmuring, “I know,” and, “me too.”

**

LUCIFER

The tension in Heaven has been humming through every angel like an ache, building and building until it grew to be almost deafening — though it was never more noticeable than it is once it’s gone, when Lucifer’s fall finally breaks it.

Raphael’s first thought, then, is to wonder if it breaks for Lucifer too. If there is any small respite for him in the place where he is now, or if there will be nothing but that painful roar of instability consuming his grace for the rest of his existence. Perhaps that is one of the prices that he will have to pay for his sedition.

Raphael spares a final thought of sympathy for his fallen brother, and hopes that, whatever he might have to endure, the tense thrum the rest of them have felt since he began to doubt will not be part of it.

*

At first Raphael believed the quiet to be peace, but soon he realizes that he was wrong. Quiet does not mean calm, and this quiet precedes a different kind of uncertainty than the one Michael struck down and abandoned. This is the silence of absence, of loss, of Heaven feeling itself to be at once injured and healed.

Raphael looks at his many shocked siblings, at Gabriel, who seems more stunned than any of the rest. He does not look at Michael, for Michael has already gone. Raphael cannot stop himself from wondering: is this better?

*

Nothing is easy now that Lucifer is gone. The Host had relied heavily on all four archangels, so for one to be gone upsets the balance — both practically and metaphysically. It is as if South disappeared from the compass, and they must now all navigate unnaturally with only North, East, and West.

Gabriel is trying. Raphael knows that Gabriel is trying, but that chilling, stunned air has not left him, and he cannot do what he used to do. Raphael wants to make him well again, does what he can, but Gabriel is an archangel and there is no excuse for forgetting that. There is only so much Raphael can do to heal his brother while he tries to heal the rest of Heaven.

Michael is present, but he does nothing but perform his own duties and direct others towards theirs now. Michael has always been their true North, unwavering and reassuring — but the lesser angels are afraid of him now, after seeing what he is capable of doing. Only Gabriel and Raphael dare to approach him anymore, and only Raphael can abide his presence for long: there is something bitter and dead in Gabriel’s gaze when he looks at their eldest brother that was never there before.

Lucifer is the only one who is physically absent, but really, Raphael is the only archangel who remains at all as he was. So, he carries on, shouldering what burdens Gabriel can’t and what Michael won’t, because at least _one_ of them must. He feels the strain of it; he has horror, guilt, fear, and grief of his own that he would like to express too, but that would take time he doesn’t have, so he buries it all and soldiers on. Heaven cannot fall to ruin because it lost one angel, no matter how important that angel might once have been.

*

It is not that Raphael did not see what Lucifer saw in the humans. Even in the Garden he could see it; he knew that there was something imperfect hidden in Adam’s depths that Lucifer’s indulgence would eventually cast light upon in Lilith. A need for _more_ that in some ways reminded Raphael of Lucifer, alongside a smallness that did not. Raphael _saw_ it, he just didn’t want to _test_ it like Lucifer did. He was wary of it, but not so wary as to inspire him to rebel.

There are moments when he wonders what might have happened had they all stood _with_ Lucifer instead of against him. But the moments are rare and short-lived, and as time passes, they come less and less often, until they stop all together.

*

The _Light-Bringer_.

A fitting title for their fallen sibling in so many ways. Brightest of the Host. Fiercely clear-minded. Blessed with insight to put the vision of other angels to shame, though he was always eager to cast light on whatever he could see that they could not. Even to Lilith he gave his light, though he didn’t like what she did with the gift once he’d given it.

One might think, with all that glorious enlightenment, Lucifer might have recognized what he would do to his family by taking such a stand for the truth he saw. All that brutal brightness, but not a thought to spare for what would happen to the rest of them without him.

Even now, Raphael admires Lucifer for many of his qualities. His selfishness, though, is not one of them. 

*

Michael continues as he has since Lucifer, absolute and unhelpful. Raphael has acclimated. He clarifies what Michael does not, takes care of details, makes sure they stay on the course Michael never takes his eyes off of.

Their Father has not been seen in what feels like forever. Raphael can’t tell if it makes a difference. He feels it. They all feel it. His absence makes them feel lost — there were always instructions before, hints to keep them on track. But the direction has been set since the beginning, so what does it really matter if God is here or not?

Gabriel is gone more often than not these days. Raphael has given up on him ever recovering; Gabriel doesn’t seem interested in being what he is anymore, and Raphael doesn’t have time to fix him. If he won’t right himself, it is best that he just goes and spares the rest of them the trouble of dragging the weight of another defective archangel behind them.

Raphael knows what’s coming long before Gabriel finally disappears for good. It’s hardly a surprise. Gabriel always spent too much time with Lucifer anyway.

**

RAPHAEL

Of his closest siblings, Raphael never considered himself the leader. That role was usually Lucifer’s or Michael’s — even Gabriel’s, on occasion.

But archangels are made to lead, and Raphael is not an exception. With Lucifer fallen, Gabriel missing, and Michael withdrawn, Raphael finds himself capable of leading the forces of Heaven alone.

Raphael pulls Heaven, and Heaven pulls Earth. He feels neither angry, nor sad, nor scared. He doesn’t feel anything anymore. If anyone pressed him, he might say that he feels tired, but no one asks, and he doesn’t think about it. There would be no point. His being tired wouldn’t change anything. The only thing that will let him rest will be when it’s all finally over, and that won’t happen for centuries to come. 

*

The prayers of every angel echo through Raphael’s mind relentlessly. Once, they were spread among the four of them, but now they echo in his mind at almost too great a volume to bear. And because their Father is gone, he has no one to whom to pass them as he used to.

“They are suffering,” Michael murmurs to him, when Raphael soars to highest Heaven to visit him. Michael can hear their prayers too, despite his distance. He sounds overwhelmed.

“I’m trying,” Raphael responds, with guilt he didn’t know he was carrying, worried suddenly he has not been doing as much as he should. He does what he can for them himself, but it’s not always much; it’s rarely enough, and Michael is right: they are suffering.

*

“They are suffering,” Michael says to Raphael again many years later, coming down from his perch to issue one of his rare direct commands.

“Yes,” Raphael responds neutrally. The angels’ suffering has been true for long enough that it is nothing but a fact to him anymore. Michael acts on the grandest plans of fate, and Raphael takes care everything that is too mundane for Michael’s attention. He does what he can; and it’s not much compared to what it should be, but it’s all he can do alone, and so it has to be enough.

*

“They are suffering,” Michael accuses when he returns from his first journey to Earth in millennia.

Raphael doesn’t respond. If Michael would like to accuse someone, let him accuse himself. Raphael has done what he can. It hasn’t been enough, but he has held fate together long enough to ensure that Dean and Sam Winchester will be available to Michael and Lucifer when they need them. He has followed orders and invented ways to stay the course, kept the angels away from humanity as much as possible to avoid mishaps; he has dragged them forward by himself for long enough that Michael will be able to take up his sword and finally do something of value again when, soon, the time comes. No one can ask more of one angel — even of one archangel — than that.

Despite Raphael’s work, Michael will be the one they’ll thank when it is all finally done, because he will be the one to deal the final blow. That is not fair, but Raphael at least will know that it was _him_ that carried them to the apocalypse. It won’t be enough, but Raphael has learned to live on scarcity, and he will make do with long-awaited peace without recognition.

So yes, Michael is right that they are suffering. But thanks to Raphael, they won’t be for much longer.

*

An echo of what Raphael used to be rings through him when the Cage breaks open. That tiny part of him sings for his brother’s long-missing but never-forgotten grace, so close he could touch it if he wanted.

 _I could go to him,_ that still-grieving part of him whispers, _just once, just briefly, before the end._

But that part is feeble and foolish. Lucifer sealed his fate when he fell, and he is no one’s problem but Michael’s anymore. Raphael doesn’t need to know what has become of Lucifer.

He’s as good as dead already.

*

“By the way, I’m Dean,” the human says with an arrogant, humorless smirk. As if Raphael doesn’t know who he is. As if Raphael wouldn’t be able to hear _Michael_ in the resonance of the vessel’s soul from halfway across the universe.

Looking at Dean Winchester now, he doesn’t remember what he used to miss about talking to Adam in the Garden. Humanity is more trouble than it’s worth.

This vessel’s sense of self-importance revolts Raphael, but he expected it. These Earth-dwellers get a whiff of the celestial and think they understand the will of Heaven. It is how they have all been since their kind’s own fall, and even the most important of them are not exceptions.

But the angel-gone-rogue beside the human, Castiel — _he_ knows why all this needs to be done. He has been in Heaven, watching, fighting. Waiting. _He_ understands, so he should know better than to try to imprison Raphael, one of the two central powers of Heaven remaining, with this ring of holy fire. Dean is ignorant, but what is Castiel’s excuse?

Perhaps it is because he is tired. There hasn’t been an angel that isn’t tired in a long, long time, but rarely has Raphael seen one so aware of his own exhaustion as Castiel appears to be.

A long, long time ago, Raphael might have taken this chance to be patient with Castiel, to tell him that he knows how he feels, and that all he’s trying to do is fix it. Raphael has been suturing Heaven’s wounds by himself since it cut itself open to throw Lucifer out, but his time as healer is coming to a close. Once the apocalypse is over, once this essential, insignificant man’s hands kill his wayward brother, then the rest of them can _finally_ find the peace together that they so badly need. Isn’t Castiel ready for the struggle be over? Doesn’t he want Paradise at last?

For a split second, he thinks about saying all that, but Raphael is tired too. He shouldn’t have to explain; Castiel should know. If he doesn’t understand, that is his own failing, and not of Raphael’s concern anymore now they’re so close to the end. So he stands in this pitiful trap they’ve got him in, and waits to see what they want.

“Where is He?” Castiel asks, instead of saying anything relevant.

It would be a strange question, but Raphael has seen this mistake too many times before to be thrown by it. _Hope_ , he recognizes in Castiel through the exhaustion. Hope like Lucifer’s last entreaty before Michael struck him down. Hope like Gabriel’s last plea that Raphael come with him to Earth, before he too abandoned him.

“ _God?_ ” Raphael mocks. “Didn’t you hear? He’s dead, Castiel.”

Castiel’s grace flinches, but nothing more. Again, Raphael remembers Lucifer, Gabriel, before their respective departures. That their Father is dead is not quite the truth, but it’s not quite a lie either, and members of the Host do better with absolutes than with shades of grey.

“Dead,” Raphael repeats, like a dog nipping at a sheep to keep it from straying.

The vessel and the insubordinate angel leave Raphael in the circle of fire. It is an insult, but it doesn’t sting. Not compared to the insult of Michael’s absence now like for the last millennia. All this petty slight does is strengthen Raphael’s conviction that the sooner this is over, the better it will be — for all of them.

*

Gabriel has hidden himself well since he left Heaven, but, suddenly, Raphael feels him again somewhere in middle America, his long-masked grace shining through space and time brightly enough to rival Lucifer’s right beside him.

And then, just as suddenly, it is snuffed forcibly out.

Raphael feels the sword as if he is the one being struck through. He freezes with the shock of it as waves of agony from Gabriel and from Lucifer wash over him.

No archangel has ever died before. For a moment, the still-living three are unified as the insurmountable pain of losing the fourth refracts deafeningly between them. Sharing the agony makes it worse, they seem to amplify each other’s hurt as they pass it back and forth, but it is also a comfort to experience it together.

Michael cuts himself off from their echo chamber first, and Lucifer follows him quickly, leaving Raphael alone with the memories of speed and laughter and _Gabriel_ rattling through the pain. He tries to pull himself out of it, but it’s hard, so hard that he begins to wonder if maybe Gabriel is lucky not to have to worry about healing even himself anymore.

 _What have we become?_ the angel Raphael was before he lost Gabriel the first time whispers through his memory in horror. But that angel is as dead as its trickster brother — as dead as its fallen brother soon will be — and there is still work to be done.

*

Raphael will not go to the final fight. He will be needed elsewhere in the fallout. He’s sure Michael won’t help, if his behavior last time is anything to go on.

*

The Cage closes on Michael and Lucifer together. It’s different from Gabriel; there’s no pain — Michael and Lucifer are not dead, they’re just _gone_. 

This cannot be.

This is not what was supposed to happen.

This is not the fate Raphael has been pulling Heaven and Earth toward this whole time.

His struggle was supposed to be _over_.

What is he supposed to do now?

Raphael blinks.

He thought he was alone before.

That was _nothing_ compared to this.

He blinks again to brace himself, then sets about scraping some kind of order back together. As long as there is an archangel left in Heaven, the structure will not fall to ruin.

He won’t let it.

He can’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr @[sinaesthete](sinaesthete.tumblr.com)


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